A menacing plan to restrict fishing over near-shore coral reefs between St. Lucie Inlet and Biscayne National Park has been dropped by the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative, a quasi-governmental organization, after a two-year campaign against it by sport fishing interests.

The proposal, introduced in 2016, would have put 20 to 30 percent of the reef area in that stretch — about 120 miles long, and from the mean high tide line to 3 miles offshore — into “marine protected areas” or no-take zones.

Fishing-doers protested, although in unpersuasive numbers at first. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also objected. Its longstanding policy is to oppose no-fishing restrictions as a solution to problems except as a last resort when all the less drastic alternatives have been tried and failed.

That didn’t look like it was enough to stop the proposition. Public comment opportunities offered by SEFCRI and its supervisor, the state Department of Environmental Protection, were under-publicized. Another limitation was the inclination of fishingdoers to squawk among themselves when their interests are threatened without moving on to action.

Then along came Bruce Marx, a Miami lawyer and fisherman with experience at drawing others into fishing causes. He already had a big, fat database of the flower and chivalry of sport fishing in southeast Florida, people ready to help him get things done. He augmented it by speaking at club meetings, enlarging the database and frequently rereminding everyone who hadn’t signed on yet.

Thus he sought and collected a blizzard of public commentary condemning the notion of shutting off fishing territory first and citing justification afterward. His final score: 1,083 added voices crying “No!”

That did it. Marx reported to his following as follows: “On 3/6/18, a meeting was held by the SEFCRI (Southeastern Florida Coral Reef Initiative) where it was announced that N-146 was being withdrawn from consideration. This was a very important win for us and shows what can happen if the fishing stakeholders voice their collective opinions to the involved government officials.”

Bad ideas have a way of reviving, so it may be too early now to get complacent about stopping that one without putting up better ideas for solving problems.

The reefs do have problems — wear and tear, pollution, environmental diseases — that need to be solved Capt. Dan Kipnis, another stubborn environmental activist, is working on a solution that he calls Project 55.

Its stated goal is to create “a comprehensive, adaptive management strategy for Southeast Florida’s coral reef ecosystem, to better balance the use and protection of the coral reef ecosystem.”
You can probably assume it won’t include notake zones.